The business and culture of our digital lives, from the L.A. Times

Justin Bieber takes pic of L.A. traffic, sends Instagram traffic

July 22, 2011 | 10:42
am

A photo from Justin Bieber is worth thousands of new users.

The tween heartthrob signed up for Instagram, and the iPhone photo-sharing service exploded.

Bieber posted a photo of snarled L.A. traffic to his 11 million-plus Twitter followers. That triggered another surge for Instagram, which is nearing 7 million users. Last month the 9-month-old service hit 5 million.

Instagram already had its celebrity users such as Snoop Dogg. But Bieber has a following as large as some countries. And they are headed to Instagram, where Bieber already has thousands of followers and the snapshot has hundreds of likes.